Pat Tiberi

Mr. TIBERI

Mr. TIBERI. Fifteen percent.

Mr. TIBERI. The capital gains and dividend rate will go up to 20 percent, and depending on what rate they are on, that marginal rate will go up as well.

Mr. TIBERI

Mr. TIBERI. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to honor Janet Brenneman on the occasion of her retirement from the Delaware County Board of Elections. Throughout our history, countless individuals have striven to preserve and expand one of our most fundamental rights -- the right of every American to cast a ballot. Informed, thoughtful participation in our electoral process by all citizens has been valued by generations of Americans as the quintessential action helping propel the United States onto the world stage as the foremost example of self-government. The dedicated men and women working at our local boards of election can trace their civic lineage to the suffragettes and freedom riders of the past. They are the defenders of our most cherished public act. In this pursuit, Janet Brenneman has devoted the last 35 years of her life to the people of Delaware County. Whether through long hours on election night or her tireless advocacy to inform the voters, Janet established an unparalleled standard of excellence for all other election officers to emulate. The Delaware Board of Elections stands out as an example for other counties throughout Ohio. Janet's quality of service is matched only by the quality of her character. A devoted friend to colleagues and a trustworthy public servant to voters, Janet's many virtues, both professional and personal, will certainly be missed and hard to replace. I offer my congratulations to Janet Brenneman on her retirement and join her friends and family in celebrating this great milestone. On behalf of the citizens of Delaware County and the 12th Congressional District of Ohio, I offer my thanks and gratitude for her many years of service.

Mr. TIBERI

Mr. TIBERI. Madam Speaker, with great pleasure I rise to recognize the distinguished work and accomplishments of Chad Bouton. The economic prosperity of our nation has always derived from the vitality of the American innovator. Through firm resolve and unparalleled imagination, these men and women help discover the ideas, practices or products that fuel our country's progress. During these challenging economic times, it is all the more important to recognize their influence in affirming the limitless potential of our great country; therefore, I am happy to recognize one such individual: Mr. Chad Bouton, who was recently honored by Central Ohio's own Battelle Memorial Institute as the Battelle Inventor of the Year. Since 1997, Chad Bouton has marked himself as a stand-out talent at Battelle. He worked as the primary innovator, inventor and principal investigator for dozens of medical device projects, from enabling paraplegics to control wheelchairs with their thoughts to providing surgeons with tools to enable minimally invasive surgical procedures. His passion for his work has led Chad to be honored with two R&D Magazine ``Top 100'' awards, several Battelle Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, as well as, having nine of his works published in numerous scholarly journals. Through the ingenuity of his thinking and tenacity of his work, Chad stands as an example to many across our country. Therefore, I am very pleased to thank him for all he has done for our country, and on behalf of Ohio's 12th Congressional District, congratulate him on his most recent award.

Mr. TIBERI

Mr. TIBERI. Madam Speaker, I rise today to express my support for H.R. 4840, the bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1979 Cleveland Avenue in Columbus, Ohio, as the ``Clarence D. Lumpkin Post Office.'' Mr. Lumpkin has long been a pillar in Columbus and the Linden community. Born in 1925, he grew up in the South in a family of sharecroppers. After high school, Mr. Lumpkin joined the United States Army where he served his country honorably in World War II. After the War, Clarence Lumpkin moved to the South Linden community in Columbus where he was elected to the South Linden Area Commission, and has been a driving force and a leader in the community ever since. His work and outstanding presence have touched many lives and are very much appreciated by his fellow central Ohioans. This post office was saved from closing with the help of Mr. Lumpkin's tireless work, so it is appropriate that this post office bears his name. I hope you will join me in honoring the life and accomplishments of Clarence D. Lumpkin and recognizing his dedication to the Central Ohio community.

Mr. TIBERI

Mr. TIBERI. Mr. Speaker, I am for health care reform, but not this version. This is a bad bill. It does nothing to address the cost of health care. This bill increases taxes on individuals and employers. It cuts Medicare and adds debt to future generations. But don't take my word for it, Mr. Speaker. My hometown newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch, has published three editorials this last week against the bill suggesting, and I quote, ``It is incredible that a sixth of the U.S. economy and the health of every American could be subjected to massive government intervention based on such fiscal dishonesty and secrecy.'' Mr. Speaker, this bill does nothing to reform our health care system. It adds people to a broken system. [From Editorials] Add It Up on health-care vote, lawmakers should pay heed to the people The Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing Democratic members of the House to pass the Senate health-care overhaul in the next week or two and to trust the Senate to agree to changes in follow-up bills that will make the plan more amenable to House Democrats. This complicated approach is a parliamentary maneuver intended to deny Senate Republicans the opportunity to kill the bill with a filibuster. Of the 11 Democratic members of Ohio's congressional delegation, one is opposed and eight say they are undecided about how they'll vote. Among Ohio's nine Republican members of Congress, there is no ambivalence. All nine plan to oppose it. President Barack Obama is pressing hard for the overhaul because it is his signature issue. He is more than a year into his administration and has been handed setback after setback, despite the fact that the White House, House and Senate are in Democratic hands. The economy is stalled, unemployment remains at punishing levels and voters are angry at the lack of improvement. Not only that, but they are alarmed about the serious amounts of debt the government has run up in less-than-stimulating stimulus efforts. The ``blame Bush'' strategy that Obama has employed to date is now a dead horse, unresponsive to further lashing. In short, Obama is desperate for a win. Ohio's Democrats must decide whether they were elected to give the American people the best health-care bill possible, or whether they were elected to save a president from a political morass. The answer should be easy: they should vote for the American people. That means saying no to the health-care overhaul plans now before Congress. The plans so are have been sold under false pretenses using accounting gimmicks that lowball the costs. They contain no serious mechanisms for controlling the escalation in health-care costs. And extending health insurance to 31 million more Americans would place demands on doctors and hospitals that will drive costs through he roof or necessitate rationing whether it takes the form of denying some treatments or making people wait longer for care. The federal government already runs two of the biggest medical programs in the country, Medicare and Medicaid, and both are headed for insolvency. Consider that the health-care overhaul calls for putting half of the 31 million uninsured onto state Medicaid rolls at a time when Medicaid already is driving state budgets into the red. If almost half of Ohio's congressional delegation is undecided, the American people are not. Recent opinion surveys find that half or more of Americans oppose the proposed overhaul. The number favoring the plan rarely tops 40 percent. No proposal to make over a sixth of the U.S. economy and to radically alter the health-care prospects of all Americans should be rammed through in the face of such opposition.

Mr. TIBERI

Mr. TIBERI. I think there is no doubt at this point.

Mr. TIBERI. I was going to pick a game, and I'm going to pick the People versus the Cornhusker Kickback, but I think it is important at the very top there for you to point out on the chart that you have got at Florida Gators, and you just mentioned at LSU. We could add Montana because there is a special provision for Montana as well. Unfortunately, they lost in the tournament yesterday. We could add the University of Connecticut. Connecticut has got a nice little special provision that is staying in the bill. New Jersey is getting another special little deal. And apparently North Dakota in the reconciliation. I don't know how you have got it just to the two, Florida and LSU. But since we are talking about special deals in special places, I think I will do the People versus the special deal in the Cornhusker Kickback.

Mr. TIBERI. For all the special deals.

Mr. TIBERI. This chart was put together before we found out that not just health care was going to be in the health care bill. That actually now we're going to be debating a student loan bill which is how the Bismarck bombshell, Bismarck bank job--but now we have student loan, the takeover of the student loan business in the health care bill. I think America has to be aware of that as well. Back to the issue at hand. The people versus the Cornhusker kickback. That special deal the people want. Is that correct?

Mr. TIBERI. The people won on the Cornhusker kickback, but I think it's important to note, as this chart partially does, that there is still Florida gator aid that is in this bill that the majority is going to have to defend, there is still the Louisiana purchase. Now, there is a water deal for a couple of Members in California that Members are going to have to defend. There is a deal in Arizona. We mentioned Montana. We mentioned Bismarck. We also mentioned Connecticut and New Jersey, just to name a few. Special sweetheart deals.

Mr. TIBERI. I do have a suggestion that may be a sequel to March madness, D.C. style. We could play the game of The Price is Right and talk about some of these sweetheart deals in our next hour that we have next week.

Mr. TIBERI. I think in a rout.

Mr. TIBERI. Hard to argue with that.

Mr. TIBERI. Let's go with Waxman versus taxes.

Mr. TIBERI. Obviously the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote most of the bill coming out of the House with the leadership on the Democratic side. And taxes are what more Americans are going to pay a heck of a lot more of. In fact, I know the Speaker is aware that most of the benefits of this bill don't actually kick in until 2014, when my daughters are going--when my youngest daughters are going to kindergarten, in 2014.

Mr. TIBERI. They're 1. So in 2014 they'll be entering kindergarten, and that is when the benefits will begin. However, the tax increases will begin right away. And in fact, the Senate bill not only increases payroll taxes, but now we have a reconciliation bill that increases or begins taxing on the payrolls of American workers for the very first time unearned income. So when we are trying to convince Americans to save more, now suddenly their annuities and their interest income from a bank and their retirement accounts and all of these other things, rents, are going to now be taxed for the first time on payroll taxes.

Mr. TIBERI. We're cracking the door open for the first time on life insurance. And it's a concern to many agents in the industry. It's not only on that side of the aisle that we have a view of tax increases. We're taxing the medical devices, we're taxing wheelchairs, we're taxing insurance plans. We are having for the very first time something that you as a lawyer, I'm sure, would question the constitutionality of. We're going to tax for the very first time health insurance in terms of, if you don't pay it, if you don't have health insurance--which you're mandated to--you're going to have an IRS agent come knocking on your door. The very first time we're going to get the IRS involved in your health care, and we're going to have to have the IRS--one estimate is $1 billion dollars a year to hire agents over the next 10 years to monitor yours and mine and the people's health care. So the IRS is going to be involved in everybody's health care. Not to mention all of the other Federal Government employees who we're empowering. But we are increasing taxes, we are cutting Medicare, and we are increasing the IRS by about 16,500 people to deal with our health care.

Mr. TIBERI. For the very first time, it taxes payroll for that unearned income at 3.8 percent. So 3.8 percent for the very first time on unearned income. And it actually raises by .9 percent, almost 1 percent, earned income on the payroll tax. I'm going to add just one other mention to this. In Washington, D.C., we're spending $1 trillion dollars. The Democratic bill spends $1 trillion dollars to save money. Kind of an oxymoron. Only in Washington, D.C., can we spend a trillion dollars to save money.

Mr. TIBERI. I think that's pretty clear; but just to further demonstrate, I had a group of students ask me, with respect to the process in Washington, D.C. because they had learned in their government book that a bill passes the House, a bill passes the Senate, it goes to conference committee, and then they work out the differences, kind of come to an agreement, and it goes back to the House and back to the Senate, when did that change? I think we all have maybe a future business in publishing to change the process because we haven't had conference committees in the past year in this Congress. We have had backroom deals. And here is another one. And after this Senate bill is deemed and passed through procedural trickery, maybe on Sunday, as the gentleman from Ohio said, that will go to the President's desk. That will have the Cornhusker kickback in it, and then the underlying bill of reconciliation will then come to the floor with all these changes in it, including something that will strike the Cornhusker kickback out, but not the other sweetheart deals, which will also include the student loan bill, among other health care items as well. That will pass with a majority vote here in the House. But as the gentleman said, it has to pass unchanged in the Senate in order for it to become law and go to the President's desk. That is a huge promise, a huge promise that many Members of this House on the Democratic side are crossing their fingers in hope for because many of them who are voting for this bill now, voting for this deemed bill, this rule that has the deemed language in it, have been fairly critical of the Senate bill which they are technically not voting on, they are deeming it passed. And I think the American people have had it up to their eyeballs with this trickery and chicanery.

Mr. TIBERI. I would certainly give it to Mr. Stupak and the brave Members who stood by him on the Democrat side.

Mr. TIBERI. I certainly wasn't there, but I will rely on press reports of what happened. But just today, one of our Democratic colleagues who voted for the House bill and announced that he was not voting for the special rule that will deem the Senate bill law, said--and I am paraphrasing--that he is voting against this bill because it actually benefits health insurance companies and benefits the pharmaceutical industry. Now, the pharmaceutical industry actually has run ads all over the country urging a ``yes'' vote on this bill even though many in the White House have publicly attacked them and publicly attacked the health insurance reform industry. It is ironic, but there, apparently at the beginning of this process, was a special deal between the President and what was then the head of this trade association to protect them from having any sort of provisions in the bill that might allow for reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada. But in addition to that, on the Medicare side, I think my colleague from Ohio has already mentioned it, we are now seeing in this bill and more in the reconciliation bill that comes maybe Sunday, maybe Monday, a huge cut in Medicare. Not just Medicare Advantage, which a third of my seniors have the Medicare Advantage plan in my district, but actual cuts to Medicare, which Medicare's own actuary, his words not our words, said that he believes that the cut is so significant that it will leave providers, doctors, to stop treating Medicare beneficiaries because they won't be reimbursed enough for their services. Now, in my district, and I am sure in the gentleman from Michigan's district and the gentleman from northeastern Ohio's district, I am already seeing doctors begin the process of not treating Medicare patients because they don't get reimbursed for every dollar that they treat a patient. They are getting reimbursed 80 cents or 85 cents. Nothing in that bill changes this. In fact, the actuary states that this $500 billion cut will make it much worse. And that doesn't even begin to talk about the impact it has on hospitals and other providers as well. So this is a huge policy issue that we are going to see, once the benefits side and the cuts occur, that Americans have no idea what is coming with respect to this huge change in policy.

Mr. TIBERI. And, actually, one of the Democratic leaders in the Senate took to the floor last week and in a speech actually came clean with respect to a statement that he said that actually insurance costs and health costs would continue to go up, and that is what we have said all along. This doesn't deal with costs of health. This doesn't deal with costs of insurance. This deals with putting a whole lot more people on Medicaid, not fixing Medicaid. This deals with a whole lot of new taxes. This deals with restricting certain things like Medicare Advantage to give people less choices. This gives people less choices for health savings accounts. It reduces people who might have a flexible savings account, reduces that from $5,000 to $2,500 in taxable benefits. The American people, once they find out what is in this bill, are going to be shocked at what is actually in this bill, aside from things like student loans that have nothing to do with health care, but actually on the health care side.

Mr. TIBERI. We have one more to go to the final four here, don't we?

Mr. TIBERI. Point of parliamentary inquiry. Looking at the chart--maybe I am looking at it wrong. Before we do People/Reid, I think you have to do MoveOn.org/Rahm.